There are numerous key incidents in history about which the educational curriculum remains eerily quiet for various reasons.
He who does not know the past understands neither the present nor the future, remarked Voltaire, a French philosopher. African proverbs say those who do not know their history have no future, and today, which has no yesterday, has no future. These insightful words highlight the significance of history as a science to humanity. It is vital to understand them in order to prevent making them again.
These 7 key historical events are excluded from the school curriculum for different reasons
How Pope Gregory IX became the culprit for the outbreak of the Black Plague
He didn’t do it on purpose, of course. He despised cats so much that he launched a full-fledged vengeance against them. The black felines were considered to be Satan’s personification. They were to be wiped out completely. Gregory’s first act as Pope was to issue this edict, which called for the mass slaughter of the hapless creatures. On June 13, 1233, it was first published.
The Roman Catholic Church ruled over a large portion of Europe. As a result, everyone quickly and zealously went about carrying out the papal decree. The cats were beaten quite soon. However, in medieval times, these creatures were mostly used to control vermin. After all, rats roamed the streets of towns in large numbers during the time.
The presence of terrible pests grew exceedingly free once the primary antagonist was eliminated. Their numbers swelled dramatically. Fleas were transported by rats. Those, in turn, were carriers of the deadly bubonic plague, which claimed the lives of more than 50 million people throughout Europe.
The explosion of the “Sultana”
It was the worst maritime tragedy in the history of the United States. Only in history class do they shy away from discussing it. In 1863, this ship was launched in Cincinnati. A total of 376 individuals were given permission to board. The ship was used to transport soldiers and supplies during the Civil War.
The Sultana arrived at Vicksburg, Mississippi, on April 24, 1865. It was on its way to pick up Union troops and Confederate POWs. Each soldier received $5, and officers received $10. In their insatiable quest for profit, the business grossly overloaded the ship. A total of 2,500 guys were carried on board. This was more than five times the “Sultana’s” capacity.
A mishap occurred along the route, and two of the four boilers burst. Those who did not perish in the explosion perished as a result of burns. For a variety of reasons, discussing this is humiliating. Historians feel that the murder of Abraham Lincoln and the jubilation of the war’s conclusion may have covered this calamity.
The Tulsa Racial Massacre occurred in 1921
The Tulsa Racial Massacre is another blemish in the United States’ history. This, too, is not discussed. The tragedy is on par with the Tragic Night of St. Bartholomew in terms of scale. A mob of whites invaded the primarily African-American Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for 18 hours, destroying houses, businesses, and individuals.
It all began when a black adolescent named Dick Rowland was accused of attacking an elevator operator called Sarah Page. The young guy was taken into custody. Meanwhile, a frightened mob gathered outside the Tulsa County courtroom, demanding that Dick be extradited so that he might be lynched. Several African Americans who had served in World War I volunteered to guard the young guy, but they were turned down. They regrouped and returned to the courtroom, armed.
An hour later, news got through the neighborhood that the building had been broken into by whites. Panic erupted, as did indiscriminate gunfire and utter pandemonium. The crowd armed themselves and raced to Greenwood to plunder and destroy homes. Officially, 36 people died, but historians estimate that the death toll was 10 times higher. Authorities are still banned from speaking about the event.
Death of an astronaut
Everything was supposed to be great in the Soviet Union. As a result, if anything went wrong, it was carefully hidden. Only decades after the Soviet Union fell apart did citizens discover the truth about numerous occurrences. The death of the first cosmonaut is one such example. It wasn’t Yuri Gagarin, either. Valentin Bondarenko, a totally different guy, was scheduled to travel into space. During a boring chamber training exercise, the pilot made a fatally dumb error.
Bondarenko treated his skin with alcohol after removing the medical sensor. The pilot put the discarded absorbent cotton on the hot stove where he had just finished making tea. Valentine attempted to put out the flames with his sleeve when the absorbent cotton burst into flames. The chamber’s atmosphere was entirely made up of oxygen. In the blink of an eye, the cosmonaut transformed into a live flame.
Bondarenko managed to receive third-degree burns all over his body while the doors were open. “It hurts too much… do anything to halt the agony,” he could barely say. Valentin passed away just a few hours later. Only a quarter of a century later, this awful tragedy was made public.
The world’s worst hunger strike
Many individuals are familiar with the 1930s famine. For many years, the Soviet authorities covered and glossed over this reality. This was due to an irrational policy that resulted in the deaths of millions of people. From the outside, it seems that concealing such a reality is impossible, yet it turns out that nothing is really impossible.
Inadvertently, the Western press became a co-conspirator in this crime. The magnitude of the disaster was obscured or understated in the media. Stalin, in fact, coordinated numerous well-planned excursions for foreign journalists at the same time. Reporters would arrive and be brought to supermarkets with stocked shelves of food. The streets were swept clean, and trusted party members depicted the peasants. Newspapers reported afterward that all claims of starvation were false and that Ukraine was a “blooming paradise.”
It wasn’t until 1937 that hunger was declared over. The census results were kept under rigorous lock and key. This event has just recently been given a fair review. Political discussion on this topic is, of course, unavoidable. All of this is based on the creators’ conscience.
The Wall Street bombing
Long before the massacre of September 11, 2001, New York had already fallen victim to another horrific terrorist attack. During the lunch hour of September 16, 1920, an inconspicuous horse-drawn van parked on the busiest street in the city’s main financial district. Just moments later, it exploded. The van was equipped with a timed explosive device.
Several dozen people died at once. More than three hundred were seriously injured. The next day, despite what happened, it was business as usual on Wall Street. Nobody took the blame for this act of terrorism. To this day, no one in the United States knows what it was. Followers of Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani are supposedly responsible. There is no proof of this.
The largest nuclear disaster in the world at that time
When most people hear the phrase ‘nuclear catastrophe,’ they probably think of Chernobyl. Fukushima, according to the more knowledgeable. In the Soviet Union, there was another nuclear disaster of comparable magnitude. A nuclear power station in Kyshtym, southern Russia, had an accident in 1957. The major cause of the tragedy, like in Chernobyl, was a design flaw. The cooling system, to be precise. Because it couldn’t be fixed, the workmen just turned off the coolant tank for almost a year.
It was discovered that radioactive waste did, in fact, need cooling. The situation reached a critical point as a consequence of an uncontrolled temperature rise, and there was a terrible explosion. Like a champagne cork, the almost 200-ton concrete cap rose. Radioactive materials were strewn over an area of 20,000 square kilometers.
Over ten thousand dwellings were damaged as a result of the tragedy. Over 270,000 persons were exposed to radioactive radiation. This unattractive aspect was likewise kept hidden. The public learned about the Kyshtym catastrophe only after the Chernobyl tragedy.
Of course, history is littered with such instances. Some of their echoes may still be heard. Nothing goes by without leaving an imprint.
